


that most precipitous fall

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [31]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Cotton Candy (Food), Earth-3, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Harlequin psychoanalysis powers go!, Life Choices, Loyalty, Mirror Universe, POV Female Character, Pining, Roller Coasters, Swords, Women Being Awesome, antisocial botanist, awkward ninja, ecological conservation is serious business, fun is serious business, it isn't a hero night out until the villain attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-22 16:11:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3735253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The League of Shadows wants Ivy and her powers. Harley wants her to be all she can be.</p><p>Pam is torn about what she wants, but she knows it definitely <em>isn't</em> to spend her night off at an amusement park with Talia al Ghul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. green grow the rushes-oh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm keeping this series organized by internal chronology rather than posting order, but I can't quite manage that here because this story _technically_ takes place between the first and second scenes of 'All the Dying Children.' The characters in each one aren't actively aware of the events of the other, so it doesn't really signify, but still. That's when.

Harley slipped out into the hall, pushing hair out of her face as she carefully shut the door to her and J's current apartment behind her.

"Sprout's asleep?" Pam asked in an undertone.

Nod. "Waylon's still singing. God, I hope the boys don't get bored with childcare anytime soon; they've spoiled her for non-communal parenting. Well, maybe _some_ moms can handle half an hour of story _and_ forty minutes of lullabyes _every night_ , but my voice runs out."

"Mm," said Pam, whose mother had sung her the same three lullabyes every night until she turned seven, and then stopped completely. Harley's mother was still alive, but they never spoke. "They say it takes a village."

Harley and J would do fine without the rest of them, though, if they had to. Especially if they ever withdrew from the mad business of vigilante humor, or socially conscious combat performance art, or whatever they were calling it now, and had more stable schedules. Not that _that_ was likely. Jokester was as likely to voluntarily stop breathing as to turn his back on the people of Gotham, which in turn was about as likely as Harley ever leaving him.

Seeing the little blonde waver, as if she felt she should sweep back into her apartment and interrupt the soothing crocodilian rumbling Waylon called a song, Pam reached over her shorter friend's shoulder to lay her hand against the panel, holding it shut. "Hey. You are _not_ a bad mother because you let your friends help you. Start thinking like that and you'll smother the girl."

Harley winced, nodded, stepped away from the door. "Right. Of course you're right. God, Pam, I'm so sure I'm going to mess her up. The stats on psychologists' children were bad enough, but this kind of life…" She shook her head. "It was so much simpler when I wasn't responsible for anyone but me."

Pam snorted at the obvious. "This life isn't so bad," she shrugged. "Where is that feckless husband of yours, anyway?"

"Hee. Still closeted with our august visitor. I thought I was going to have to make my excuses so I could go put El down and meet you, but Ra's really only wanted to talk to J, so I just slipped out without saying anything, and now he's _stuck._ Possibly for the rest of the night." She grinned wickedly. "Don't let yourself get sucked into too many lectures after you go off with him, Red."

Pam shrugged again. Ra's al Ghul was kind of like a professor emeritus; she'd spent long enough in school one way and another that she'd gotten to almost like listening to old people ramble, as long as they knew things she didn't. It was soothing, and a form of profit that diminished no one in your gaining. She would probably let herself get lectured a lot, if she spent much time with the old man. But that was for the future. "Movie night," she said firmly, bringing the conversation back to the now. Movies weren't the _only_ things they did when they blocked off evenings to kick back together, but they were a good, easy centerpiece to a night off, so they'd gotten to be the default. "We staying in or going out?"

"Oh, going out," said Harley, bouncing. She looked so lit up at the idea Pam couldn't be a Grinch and protest, although she'd kind of prefer to stay in her very own comfortably arranged apartment that she might not have for much longer, watch something stupid, eat something unhealthy, and pretend they were teenagers with no responsibilities for an hour or two.

She nodded. "Okay." They moved toward the elderly elevator at the end of the hall, passing her door and Ed's on the way. "Will you—I'll miss move nights," Pam said. "You're sure you'll be okay if I abandon you to the all-boys' club?"

Harley flapped a confident hand. "Hey, there's other girls around. I mean, not in the field with us, and none of them are you, but I'll be fine. There's Meg and Paula and Jules, and Maewen, and Lark from the Iceberg, and Crystal sometimes, you know, Heat Sink--she might even start playing ranged support if we need it after you're gone, _and_ I've got my whole book club. And I still go for training with Doctor Thompkins at the clinic. Oh, and Priscilla has a Gotham house now, so she'll be around sometimes."

Pam wrinkled her nose a little; she didn't get along as well with Cheetah as Harley did. But they'd had good team-ups when Superwoman and Owlman engaged in cooperative evil scheming, and Priscilla Rich was good company, warm and outgoing, and better at doing girl things than Pam. Also lavishly generous when shopping with friends, which was hard for Pam to accept, but not for Harley.

" _And_ Linda Friitawa invited me to check out her lab. And J and I have coffee with Edna every two weeks."

Pam couldn't help smiling a little at the exhaustive catalogue of Harley's localized female friends, right down to the closest thing she had to a mother-in-law. "Right, I get it. You'll be fine without me."

"So don't worry," Harley nodded, as they reached the end of the hall. "And don't let me hold you back."

"As if," Pam replied, and pushed the call button. "What was that drama I missed when you guys first met up with the League delegation, anyway?"

Harley flapped a hand. "Oh, just some confusion about titles. Ra's wanted to talk to our leader." She snickered. "My big idiot didn't realize he meant him right away. Not like he bosses everybody around in the field, right?"

J issued commands sometimes in thoughtless streams, which had started to really annoy Pam until she noticed that when you _didn't_ do as he said he barely seemed to notice, let alone mind.

"Not as if everybody calls us Jokester's Circus," she agreed wryly.

"Not like everybody and their auntie doesn't come to him for advice." Harley shook her head. "I hope Sir al Ghul realizes there's very little chance J won't tell you and me whatever they're telling him."

Pam shot her little friend a funny look. "You I get," she said. "You two are practically a symbiotic life-form sometimes. Me?"

"Pam. You're family. He's not going to let you walk into the middle of the League of Shadows _without_ anything useful he _could_ tell you."

Fine line, there. J wouldn't give her personal blackmail on Ra's, not if it had been given to him in trust. He _would_ tell her any major secrets of the organization. Probably. If they'd impact her, at least. "I haven't even decided if I'm going."

"I think you should." Harley squeezed her arm. "It could be a wonderful opportunity. And if it doesn't work out, you can always come back."

The elevator at long last clunked to a stop on their floor. "Unless I get killed."

Harley snorted, and used the grip on Pam's forearm to haul her through the opening elevator doors. "How could rainforest conservation possibly be more dangerous than working with us? And you'll have a horde of ninjas around as backup, even if the logging companies send assassins or something."

"I can handle assassins," Pam said, as Harley let her go to punch the ground floor button, and they began the usual jerky descent.

"I know. Pam, we're not kicking you out or anything, but I think you should go for it. You've always been meant for bigger things."

Pam bit the inside of her cheek. "Just because I'm the only meta…" Besides Basil, but he was in and out of the city so much she never quite adjusted to his presence before he was gone again.

"It's not that!" Harley's denial was startlingly emphatic. "You're one of us. _Always._ But...you deserve more than Robinson Park."

Harlequin always did read people too well.

Because Pam _wanted_ more. She knew every tree in Gotham, the ivy on the older buildings, the holly hedges around City Hall. Knew how to tangle a man's ankles in sidewalk weeds so quickly and casually it would seem to every observer as though he'd just tripped on a crack in the pavement. She knew Robinson Park so well she could feel parts of it clear across Gotham, and some days it was hard to leave it. She still slept there sometimes, curled inside a many-layered cocoon of protective vegetation as she had in the first months after her change. Sometimes she got so sick of city living she wanted to say the hell with humanity and set all the roots she could call up tearing through concrete.

The thought of being back in Brazil, where she'd done most of her field work for her doctorate, and being able to _feel_ the jungle titans now, being able to _protect_ them, it pulled at her.

But she wasn't sure she could handle it. Even the young stands of timber you could find out past the suburbs had more depth to them than Gotham's parks, and for all Pam knew the Amazon rainforest would hit her now like one giant jolt, take her under and never let her go. Plants listened to her, but she listened to them, too, and who knew what the Amazon wanted?

Trees were no less selfish than any other living thing, and if they were angry they'd be _justified,_ but...lashing out, that wouldn't help. If the rainforest turned into an active enemy, people would kill it far more quickly and completely than they were now, by taking advantage of it, devouring and and pushing it back to exploit the land it covered. Carpet bombs and herbicides and who knew what. Humans were _good_ at killing things. It wasn't a racial trait Pam was especially proud of, and she didn't really want to pass it on to her plants, though she was sure they'd take to it with enthusiasm. But the way things were now, that would only be a survival trait if they went to war with humanity and _won_ , and that…she couldn't. She'd lose that battle, for one thing, at this point, and on the way to losing she'd hurt so many people, and…she couldn't.

It was safer if she stayed in the city. Better. For everyone.

You should never walk onto a battlefield with your loyalties divided.

"We'll say the same kinds of things to Ella when she's old enough to move out," Harley's voice broke in gently, and it took Pam a second to reorient herself, a second in which the elevator gave its final jerk.

"I'm not your daughter." There was an edge in her voice that she didn't try to hold back. The doors slid open.

"But you're family." Harley's eyes were big and blue and sad, and she didn't say out loud that Pam had come to them hurt. Lost. And thinking of herself as a stray, to be patched up and sent on her way, bothered her almost as much as being thought of as a child, so Pam looked away from that not-statement and walked out of the elevator with extremely correct posture.

Faltered, at the woman poised like a panther in one of the shabby lobby chairs, paging through an old _National Geographic_ with a studied lack of expression.

Talia al Ghul would not be nearly so disconcerting, Pam had thought several times, if she didn't wear clothes that dripped money. Harley might be able to identify some of the designers, she was better at that kind of thing, but you didn't need to catch the details to grasp what kind of woman Talia was. She wore money and power and the ability to rip your spleen out through your nose behind a brooding silence that always seemed to be looking down on everyone—and not just because she was roughly six feet tall.

Harley's shoulder bumped Pam's bicep as the two of them managed to mill, nearly stationary in the lobby of their own apartment building, and they shared a speaking look that said ' _what is she doing here?'_ before meandering unconvincingly over to the mailboxes, where Pam fiddled with hers while she bent her head close to Harley's. "I thought she was in the meeting with J. Or…shopping, or something," she murmured.

Harley snickered a little. "You noticed about the Gucci, too?"

Pam shrugged. "Is that what it is?" Her mailbox came open and was, unsurprisingly, empty. They didn't exactly hand out their street address. She closed it again with a click.

"You two make me feel kind of inadequate," Harley confessed in a whisper, with the squinchy-eyed smile and lighthearted voice that showed she was joking but not saying anything untrue. Pam...supposed she understood; Ivy had her powers, including the pheromone thing, and _Pam_ had been halfway into her second doctorate and comfortably published in her field when her academic career went sideways, while Talia was a wealthy, statuesque beauty with decades of combat training under her belt.

On the other hand, Harley was _Harley._ Her knack for reaching people's hearts and her ridiculously healthy marriage were nothing to sniff at, and it wasn't like she was _weak,_ or less intelligent than Pam just because she'd been younger when her career derailed _._ A doctorate was a doctorate. And money, well, they didn't have that, but it wasn't really important. Did not impact a person's adequacy.

"You shouldn't," was all Pam said.

Harley dimpled at her. "Thanks."

"Even though you're short."

"Hey!"

"We make you look about six. Baby-face."

"Hey!" Not real offense, and there was a curl of grin there, but she still turned her back and put her nose in the air. Then, tossing her hair as though she'd been challenged, Harley marched across the room toward the ninja heiress, who looked up with a fairly good impression of only just noticing they were there. "Hey," the blonde greeted, the same word in a very different tone. "I guess we're not being great hosts if you're stuck hanging around in the lobby like this. Not that National Geographic isn't riveting, but that's an _old_ issue."

"I hadn't read it before," said the dark-haired woman, setting the magazine aside.

"Really, though," said Harley, as Pam joined her, trying to find an appropriate position so she wasn't lurking outside the conversational radius but the two of them weren't boxing Talia into her seat. "I thought you were still upstairs with your father. You shouldn't have been stuck down here alone; I'm sorry."

Talia shrugged. "My father prefers to conduct much of his business privately," she said, as though it didn't bother her to be left waiting in the hall like a child or a dog. "I did want to speak to you," she added, turning her large dark eyes on Pam, and she stood. "Doctor Eisley. I thought you might have more questions about our invitation."

Pam folded her arms over her stomach and returned the other woman's level gaze with a pensive one. "Legally, you want to hire me. As a botanist with your nonprofit."

Having an actual paying job that matched her credentials was alluring in its own right, she wouldn't deny. On the other hand, her last employers had cut costs on safety equipment and then used that fact to get her out of the way when she started raising questions about where the R&D budget was going, exactly. If she hadn't developed meta powers instead, and torn up the lab in her near-death-experience throes before dragging off like some kind of ivy-encrusted Swamp Thing, she'd be bones under a Waynetech greenhouse. Maybe not even that. Nitric acid had many applications.

"Yes," agreed Talia who, whatever her role in her father's secretive stealth corps, was on paper the Deputy Director of the Leafshadow Foundation, and had demonstrated she knew how to talk the talk. "Your expertise is invaluable. Covertly, we also need your power. Human destruction moves too fast for natural biomes to keep up with; you can reverse that."

Help the forest stand firm. It was a dream she'd had since she was a girl.

But she was afraid.

Not just of losing control, either. The League of Shadows was respected, but _shadowy_. Ra's al Ghul had been an inspiration to _Gandhi,_ and already ancient then, but there could be a dark side to it all that would devour her whole, or tear her to pieces trying to discover a way to give her powers to all their loyalists, or something even worse, and if she went with them she wouldn't have anyone watching her back. She'd gotten used to having people she trusted around, in case. Just…in case.

She tapped her fingers against her elbow, and then decided to be frank. "Listen. Assistant Director. I'm flattered, but you didn't come all the way to Gotham just to recruit me. There's something else going on."

"My father is entirely sincere," Talia stated. Not visibly offended, at least. She sighed. "But yes, in good faith as allies I will confess that we do have secondary business. Bruce Wayne."

Pam raised her eyebrows. "You have business with Wayne?"

"Say rather he _is_ our business." Talia's mouth twisted. "He trained among our Shadows. Years ago, he came to us and swore solemn oaths, spoke of the injustice of the world and its need for fit guardianship. He was brilliant, and talented, and said all the right things, and perhaps my father was beguiled somewhat by the thought of how much more easily some of our goals might be achieved with the aid of a powerful American corporation, once we discovered his true identity." She paused. "We trusted him with far too many of our arts and secrets, and we later learned that he had stolen far more. Father had begun to think, toward the end of his training, that in time Bruce might serve as his successor."

Oh, now. "Aren't you good enough?" Pam demanded. Point against joining the League. She made some allowance for Ra's apparently honestly being five hundred years old, and he _did_ have female agents on the same footing, at least officially, as his male ones, but still. Academia had presented enough glass ceilings to last her a lifetime.

Talia's smile was perhaps the most genuine expression she had shown since she came to Gotham, though the bulk of the emotion was wry. "Perhaps for Father. But not for everyone whose respect the League requires. The thought was that we might lead together. I was…very young, and he is…extraordinarily charming."

Ah. And coming to Gotham must have stirred up a lot of old baggage; Pam knew the look of someone not _quite_ over their ex.

And they had come to Gotham to deal with Bruce Wayne, who had apparently trained as a ninja in the Himalayas. Really, now. Pam narrowed her eyes.

"You think he's the Owl too, don't you?"

Full lips pursed. "If he is not, he has almost certainly shared our secrets with him. We will prove it, if we can. We have assembled evidence—very little we could submit to a court of law, you understand, but sufficient for our certainty—of his misuse of our teachings, in the years after his break with us, as he pursued further training. Wrongful deaths, mostly. We will probably confront him before we leave. It will not be conclusive. It never has been before."

She was hiding something.

"I'm sorry," said Harley. Talia looked as startled as Pam felt— _she_ at least hadn't forgotten Harley was there, but hadn't been prepared for her to break her silence, either. "About Wayne," Harlequin continued, striking that balance of sounding kind without sounding pitying Pam had no idea how to do. "Betrayal is just about the worst thing in the world. I hope you can resolve it." The corner of her mouth ticked up. "And not just because resolving the Wayne problem would probably help us out a lot, too."

Talia inclined her head after a moment. "Thank you."

Harley shrugged. "Not at all." She flashed one of the brilliant smiles that everyone always had so much trouble not returning. "Look, enough business for now," she said. "All work and no play makes life not much worth living. Pam and I were planning to take the evening off, anyway; do you want to come along? Have some Gotham City fun?"

"Fun?" Talia repeated, as though perhaps that word had not been included in her English curriculum, though obviously she was perfectly fluent. Possibly she doubted the ability of Gotham to contain anything fun; Pam could respect that.

Harley looked faintly wilted at the rebuff, and Pam huffed. "You have some religious objection to having fun, al Ghul?"

The ninja turned to look down at her, and gave a slow blink accentuated by heavy eyelashes. "I'm a Muslim," she said flatly. "And not even a very good one. What do they teach you in this country, to think fun is counted as forbidden?"

"It's a figure of speech, actually," Harley rallied.

"Sorry," Pam threw out, knowing she didn't sound very. "I forgot some idioms might throw you, since English isn't your first language."

Talia met her eyes, and Pam raised her eyebrows. Was she going to make something of it? She wouldn't really mind if she did; then there would be a clear-cut reason not to leave with the al Ghuls in a week, and also, even more selfishly, if they got into a fight, assuming she didn't wind up maimed she could then have her evening with her best friend _without_ spending the whole time catering to an arrogant stranger. If she _was_ going to be leaving Gotham soon, she wanted to store up all the memories she could of good times with this second (better) family she'd somehow managed to gain.

"C'mon," Harley wheedled. Pam knew the signs; she owed something herself to Harley's tendency to reach out when she saw holes in people's hearts, and between Talia's betrayal of a weak point, with her oblique confession about Wayne, and the puzzled stiffness with which she'd greeted friendly overtures, Harley was probably not going to take no for an answer. "Girl's night out."

"Girls' night," Talia repeated flatly.

"Well, _yeah,_ " said Harley, rolling her eyes as if it was obvious. "I haven't gone out with a group of girlfriends since med school, and med school social outings are…." She squinched up her face and wiggled her hand in the air. "Well, let's just say everyone's strung a little tight."

Pam and Talia's eyes met over Harley's head, and amusement curled the botanist's mouth up at the hint of bewilderment she spotted. Harley seemed to be entirely outside the tall woman's experience, and Pam wondered if Ra's al Ghul had ever let his daughter far enough out of his sight to make friends or be at all normal, or if it was just that Harley's energy was a little much for someone mostly used to ninjas.

She nodded, slightly. If going out in a group was important to Harley, and if it was something Talia had never even gotten to do, Pam could live with it. She wasn't sure whether Talia got the message or not, but she felt better about herself after sending it, anyway.

"I would prefer to avoid the cinema," Talia announced at last. "That is where American women usually go on such excursions, is it not?" she added, when Harley and Pam both fixed her with contemplative looks.

"Well, it's one place, but not if you don't want to," Harley shrugged, and then grinned. "Ooh, I know. Let's hit the Amusement Mile, I've got a yen for roller coasters."

"Don't you and J usually go there on dates?" Pam asked delicately.

"We haven't been for a while. Busy-busy-busy, you know." Harley flipped her hair over one shoulder and peered up at their guest. "Have you ever been to an amusement park, Talia?"

"I have been to the circus," Talia volunteered after a moment. The pause and the inanity of it made her seem a little less condescending and a little more shy, and Pam disliked her a little less. "And I rode the London Eye."

"I've always wanted to do that," enthused Harley.

Talia shrugged. "It goes very slowly. I prefer flying."

"Well, not everyone can afford private planes, Miss al-Ghul," Pam put in. She was afraid it came out a bit tarter than she'd wanted, and Harley's hand landed on her forearm, tightening. Seriously, though. Too good for the movies, turning her nose up at tourist attractions other people wanted to visit… "Roller coasters definitely don't go slowly," she added, trying not to sound grudging. "You should definitely try them."

"It'll be fun," said Harley, brushing aside the tension. "Come on, let's gussy up a little before we go. Everybody'll be staring."

Pam snorted. Heh. Blonde, brunette, redhead. They probably _were_ going to turn heads, come to think of it. Pam had developed a tendency to dress dowdily in everyday life, so she didn't have to be Ivy all the time—any slight advantages it gave just made her feel manipulative, and it was _exhausting_ ; men always assumed a pretty girl looking nice was doing it for them, and took it as an open invitation at best to flirt and preen and otherwise demand more attention and energy than Pam had to give strangers, especially after those awful months learning to control the pheromone _thing_ —but it couldn't hurt to enjoy being a beautiful woman sometimes, right? Especially when you had friends around to bail you out of any pitfalls.

"Gussy?" repeated Talia, and this time, Pam was pretty sure, she had genuinely never heard the word before.

Maybe this would be fun, after all.

* * *

Talia, despite her ostentatious outfit, was not wearing makeup. She had the gift of some Mediterranean complexions of lashes, lips, and lids that were naturally dark enough not to need artificial accent, and good skin; Pam could see why she didn't bother, especially if her Foundation had to deal with people who had problems taking a woman seriously. But Hurricane Harley had blown into town: she ducked back into her own apartment to grab an armful of 'supplies' as quietly as possible, then bustled the both of them into Pam's front room, which was thankfully tidy except for all the plants, and within ten minutes had gotten Assistant Director Al Ghul to agree to a pink lip gloss that softened the whole look of her face, and then a touch of eyeliner.

Pam, meanwhile, was required to take her braid down and brush out her hair, and then wear her nice green blouse and the fitted jeans. Also eye makeup, because despite the still-unsettling general enhancement of her looks since the near-death experience, she still had the general pallor of her Scottish ancestors, which did not come with natural airbrushing. Harley debated her _own_ outfit until Pam took the skirt away, threw the capris at her head, and told her to get dressed already.

Talia's bemusement at all of this was just as funny to watch as Pam had hoped, and when they got to the Amusement Mile she moved up to bafflement. Pam challenged her to a shooting game, and lost, but it was win-win because Talia was awarded a fluffy bear. She stared at it. "No, thank you," she said.

"It's your prize," Harley hissed.

"But I don't want it."

"You symbolically shot and killed it," Pam interjected, smiling crookedly. "It's your prey, mighty hunter."

Talia looked downright offended, and shoved the bear back into the game runner's hands. "I don't want it."

She stalked off to investigate a stand selling candied almonds, while the man in the amusement park polo shirt shook his head and hooked the bear onto the wall again, while Pam fought to keep a straight face, and while Harley gave her a look that said _I'm onto you, buddy._

Candied almonds were a success. All three of them liked cinnamon. Harley wanted cotton candy, but Pam pointed out that eating a lot of sweets before going on roller coasters was a recipe for discomfort at best.

So roller coasters happened. Pam didn't hate thrill rides but she didn't love them either, and she tended to clench her jaw when falling or upside-down, weathering the disorientation rather than giving herself up to it. The Plunging Falcon sat three across, and Harley took the middle seat and squeezed each of their hands before the big drop. She made Talia throw her hands up in the air on the second pass through, because that was an important part of the 'coaster experience, and dropped her head casually on Pam's shoulder with a contented sigh as the ride slowed down. Harley was like that.

She scrambled out as soon as the safety harness disengaged, in a hurry to get to the booth where they tried to sell you photos of yourself looking ridiculous in freefall, vaulting right over Talia to do so, and leaving Pam alone with the ninja woman. Whose face split, as she watched, into a real, startling smile. Her sleek hair was disheveled and her heavy-lidded eyes seemed less supercilious, scrunched up from beneath to make room for the expression, and it didn't vanish when she glanced at Pam. "Can we ride it again?" she asked.

Apparently she'd liked it after all. "We have to get back in line," Pam shrugged, unbuckling and standing up, but not shoving to get past or attempting to replicate Harley's ridiculous exit. "And first, catch up with the Energizer Bunny," she added, wryly, as she followed Talia onto the platform.

"Come on, you two!" Harley called over the fence from outside the ride. "What's the holdup? You _have_ to see the photo of us, it's _hilarious!_ "

The flash of the automated camera had caught them on the first big drop, their long hair stretching above them in three dramatic ribbons, Harley in the middle with her mouth open in a delighted scream and her hands held high, flanked by Pam and Talia's fixed expressions of grim concentration. "Pam, I love you, but I will never understand your angry coaster face," Harley told her. "But as a _matching pair…!_ "

She trailed off into laughing at them again. Pam punched her halfheartedly in the shoulder.

Talia snorted, her arms folded as she contemplated the screen. "We look like your bodyguards."

"I feel very safe," Harley assured her. "So. More rides, or candy?"

Harley bought their faces on a mug, because she was ridiculous, and eventually got her cotton candy, after they rode the Falcon again and the other two coasters, and an absurd swooping thing that had you lie on your stomach and was supposed to simulate hang-gliding. (Talia said it did not.)

"Talia?" Harley said quietly, drifting to a stop amongst the cluster of food and souvenir shops, as she tugged the last of the crinkly pink menace-to-teeth off its cardboard cone.

"Hm?" asked Talia, who had not been prepared for how easily the stuff melted and gotten distressingly sticky sampling it, and not said much since she'd finished rinsing her hands in overpriced bottled water.

"You seem…sad," Harley ventured. Pam raised her eyebrows. She wouldn't have said the Assistant Director seemed anything but quiet, which seemed to be her natural state. "Is there anything I can do?"

Talia shook her head. "Not…sad, precisely. More…I have never been to anything like this park, before. But this part of it reminds me a little of the street fairs I attended when I was small. My older brother Dusan does not like to go out in public, but he would take me to them. I…have not seen much of my brother since I came of age, and…."

"You miss him," said Pam, surprised again by sympathy. She was an only child herself, but that didn't mean she couldn't respect the bond between siblings. Her aunt had always been there for her mother, even if no one else had. Harley worried about her own baby brother on a regular basis.

"I expect to miss him more keenly." Even Pam could see the sadness now. "His life is coming to an end."

"I'm so sorry," said Harley, with her way of making trite phrases sound sincere. "There's no treatment?"

Talia's lips quirked. "For old age? None worth the risk. My brother is ninety-six years old," she elaborated drily, entirely too amused at their momentary confusion. (Maybe she'd noticed Pam's smirking after all.)

Pam opened her mouth and closed it again. It made sense. Of course it did. Talia's father had lived five centuries; why would he have only begun to have children recently? _None worth the risk_. The Demon's Head said that the secret to his long life led only to insanity, wild mutation, and horrible death for most who attempted it, when asked why he did not share. And how would he know that, except from experience? How many of his loved ones had he destroyed trying to grant them immortality, before he accepted letting them age to death as the lesser evil?

Harley put her hand on Talia's arm. "You should make time to spend with your brother, when you get home," she advised, very gentle. "I know it's not my place, but I know if my brother were terminally ill, I'd want to get as much time as possible with him before I had to say goodbye."

Talia blinked rapidly, and pressed her hand over Harley's for a second. "I will consider your advice," she said, in a voice only a tiny bit thicker than before. "Now," she continued briskly, pulling her shoulders back, "let us investigate the absurdly large rotating tea set I see on the other side of this fountain."

Pam really couldn't hate her anymore.

As the evening drew to a close, Talia insisted on buying dinner for all three of them at the nicer of the place's two restaurants, which was at the uphill end, overlooking the rest of the park and a large slice of the Gotham skyline. Harley teased both of them about vegetarianism—Talia was and Pam wasn't, although she was choosy about her beef sources because of pasture deforestation—and for dessert they got ice cream bars so they could eat it in the rather nice little garden outside. Also because Talia had never had an ice cream bar before and Harley considered this a travesty.

In about half an hour the garden would start to get crowded because of the eleven o'clock fireworks, but for now they were able to have a very restful stroll among a series of pleasantly healthy grape arbors. Pam identified the cultivar, and continued to expand on the point long after the other two had completely lost interest, much to her own amusement.

She was almost feeling friendly toward Talia now, she realized. Working with her didn't seem that bad anymore. And that was probably one of the reasons Harley had set this outing up; she didn't want Pam turning down a good thing just because Talia rubbed her the wrong way. Normally she detested being _managed_ , but she never could hold anything against Harley.

She did and didn't want to leave, and maybe she'd only disliked Talia in the first place because it had started to feel like she was being pressured to choose between her and Harlequin, and there could never be any contest. Pam detested being caught in the middle, and life seemed determined to force it on her enough already. Though circumstances aside, Talia genuinely _was_ annoying.

…though if you didn't like Harley, _she_ could be annoying, especially when she got high-handed and thought she knew better than you did how you felt. _Especially_ when she was right.

But most people did like her. She and Jokester really were an undeniably well-matched couple. Apart from Harley being infinitely better-looking, but Pam wouldn't say that out loud; it wasn't J's fault he'd had his face carved up by a sick whack job and his creepy little minion. (Not that he'd been a looker beforehand, by all accounts.)

The soft _shluff_ of ice cream falling to the ground in a lump drew her attention back to her immediate surroundings, and she blinked. Talia had stopped walking, the naked wooden popsicle stick hanging at her side, her gaze fixed steadily on the restaurant window; on something she could see _through_ the window. Ivy followed the look, adrenaline already spiking at the thought of what could have put such a stricken expression in the composed woman's eyes.

The television mounted above the bar inside had begun to display a close-up clip of Bruce Wayne's handsome, smiling face, presumably as part of a news story, and Talia had forgotten everything else, a look of deep, abiding sorrow etched across her face, easy to recognize this time because Pam had had practice. Sorrow and also…yearning.

 _Habibi_ , her lips formed silently.

A bunch of grapes smacked her in the face.

It took a startled second for Talia and Harley to turn to the culprit, and by the time they did Pam was already speaking. "He _is_ very charming, huh?" She stressed the present tense of the verb as though it tasted bad. Talia had given herself away earlier, even if Pam hadn't caught it then.

Harley just looked confused—she hadn't seen, had been looking at the skyline when Talia froze, hadn't put it together, yet—but the sharp tension in Talia's shoulders, the guilty way her mouth pursed, they said enough. Pam clenched her jaw. Betrayal tightenened in her chest. "You still love him." That was the thing, the secret she'd sensed lurking earlier. This woman believed Bruce Wayne was the black-feathered monster of Gotham's nights, believed he was a murderer and traitor and thief, but she still called him 'Beloved.'

No one should walk onto a battlefield with her loyalties divided.

Challenge in the foreigner's squared jaw. "And if I do?"

Black eyes locked with green, and the arbors rustled in the windless night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poison Ivy is composed mostly of fertility archetypes and rage. Since she has the unusual quality of committing her villainy in accordance with the _dictates of her conscience_ , Good Pam is prone to moral conflict. Because the other mirroring option was having her do the right thing for terrible reasons. ^^ And Good Talia kind of reminds me of Damian, which was not on purpose but makes sense.
> 
> Dusan al Ghul, who had self-image problems because he was born with a fierce case of albinism and his father is a dick, is slightly better known as the White Ghost. He appeared in canon mostly to give Ra's his body. This Ra's is a _significantly better parent_ , but he still only rates about a Batman on the dad scale, so Dusan still has adequacy issues.


	2. and ever more shall be so

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I failed to tag any characters for this fic on Thursday, and posted chapter one under the wrong date, so I'm kind of surprised anyone read it at all. Teach me to rush!

"He _is_ very charming, huh?" Pam asked, eyebrows high. Watched Talia al Ghul for the faintest signs of guilt, or shame. _Habibi,_ she'd whispered. "You still love him."

Challenge in the foreigner's squared jaw. "And if I do?"

"Then I have to ask what exactly we're doing calling each other allies. What you're really doing in Gotham. Why you'd invite me into your order, whether it _really_ had anything to do with the rainforests at all."

" _Pam_!" Harley exclaimed, scandalized.

And sure, that probably wasn't fair. Ra's was the one who'd made the offer, if nothing else. But Talia was all structure and line, carefully maintained, like a topiary garden, and something like this, affection for the enemy, wouldn't just live wild and uncontrolled in a mind like that, not unless she _let_ it, which meant like kudzu or some other invasive vine it had probably snaked its way into everything, and Pam hadn't trusted her from the start and this was a _damn_ good reason. This would explain everything.

"She's an idiot," Ivy announced, rage writhing in her chest. She had her feet braced apart, toes dug into the earth and arms crossed, and the grape vines were beginning to boil up around her, smothering the trellises and snaking their way up every wall and fence and lamppost.

As the zone under her influence expanded, their fellow patrons drew back, a few of them frightened of the writhing vines, more of them looking judgmentally at Talia in the assumption she had committed some villainy. It was possible someone in the Owl's pocket would come looking to arrest or even shoot Pam in a little while, but she didn't care. That was later. "All that bastard has to do is smile at her and she'll betray us."

"I will _not_ ," Talia growled.

She had a firm stance of her own, one that suddenly looked like a fighter's root. As far as _she_ was concerned, Pam had probably just challenged her, questioning her honor—and all three of them _knew_ that if Talia got past the plants, Pam would go down hard. Powers told for a lot, and she was stronger than her build suggested, but her hand-to-hand was nothing special. Harley could take her nine falls out of ten, being both barehanded. Talia was a _ninja_.

The ninja's hands had curled into fists. "I will not. He has my love, not my loyalty."

"You think you can keep those apart? _Really?_ " Pam hissed. "You think if he makes you promises, you'll be able to tell which ones are lies? Love makes you stupid."

"I will not let myself be used," Talia said firmly. Grape vines, thickening with every minute, writhed steadily nearer her, and she did not recoil. She was still holding the popsicle stick, and if Pam pumped out much more power it might sprout. _That_ might scare her. It was almost tempting; anything to get an actual uncontrolled _reaction._ "But the heart loves as it will."

"If you stop feeding it, it'll go away eventually," Pam growled. "Whatever you loved was a lie all along."

Talia shook her head. "There is a great man in him," she said. "Buried under the rage and pride. I can see it still, when I look at him. If he would only turn his back on the dark path he walks, he could be the best of us."

Breath hissed between Pam's teeth. "And if penguins had actual wings maybe they could fly. 'Greatness' isn't worth anything in someone who wouldn't spit on you if you were burning."

"I cannot simply _stop_ loving."

"You can stop being stupid about it. What will it take for you to understand that he's a monster, and he's never going to change?"

"He _could_ change." I could change him, she meant, uncompromising dark eyes full of passion in a way Pam was surprised to learn they could be, and that stupid, self-destructive conviction that you could remake a monster with your love always made her want to _break_ something. Beauty and the Beast was  _Stockholm Syndrome apologism,_ not a how-to.

"You're nothing but a tool to him," she ground out. Despite not knowing anything about their relationship, the details or how they'd come to know each other. She knew enough of Wayne, and she knew the sorrow she'd seen in the other woman's eyes, deeper than just wanting what she couldn't have. "That's not going to change. Ever."

" _Pam._ " Harley cut in, punctuating the hard-edged address with a firm hand on her shoulder. "Stop. Talia has the right to hope. Everyone deserves a chance, remember? Even him. If Talia wants to be the one to keep giving him chances, then that is her _choice._ "

Pamela clenched her jaw, pulled free. "She's too good for him," she hissed, and then rounded more directly on Talia. "You hear me? I don't like you, but he doesn't deserve to kiss your feet."

What Talia would have done with this declaration was never revealed, because in the next instant the air was split by a scream.

People were always screaming at an amusement park, often in true terror as all their instincts mistakenly informed them of imminent death by collision or falling, but this was different. This was not the sound of thrill-riding or even a burst of involuntary fear, but dread and horror, warning to others just as much as panic for one's self, and within seconds, it was not alone.

While worried murmuring broke out between the other patrons in the grape garden, the three women turned as one to peer down the decoratively wooded slope; Harley gave a scoff of frustration almost at once, and turned to scramble up the nearest arbor, to make up for her lack of height. Squinted down the hillside at the lamplit square below.

"Is that…a flaming sword?" Talia asked, as the bright blade flickered into view between narrow treetrunks.

Harley nodded, leaning far out to the right to see around the screen of trees and the kitschy little grey-stone chapel parked among them. "It is. Wrong color and style to be Firefly pulling a rescue, and he's out of town anyway."

"Azrael," Pam sighed, her anger shredded away in the face of emergency. "I knew the Order couldn't hold him forever." _This_ was a Gotham night out. A hero's work was never done. And never had the courtesy to restrict itself to normal working hours. She'd _known_ she should have brought some field gear.

Shared madness was the glue that held the Gotham Circus together. Anyone who doubted it could watch Pamela Eisley, who had never fought a day in her life before the night that she'd died and come back with every green thing in a hundred yards singing in her head, slipping her nice night-out flats back on to run _toward_ the sound of screaming. Not even because it was expected, or the price for acceptance in her new family. Not even because it helped with the knot of frustrated powerlessness that had formed in her chest long ago and expanded to Gordian proportions after her near-murder. Because it was _right._

Harlene Quinzel pulled a slightly crumpled black mask from her pocket and smoothed it over her face. One must observe the formalities. Glanced from one of her companions to the other; the readiness in Ivy's eyes, the nod of deference from Director al Ghul, as guest to host. Smiled, steel and sunshine. "Let's go."

They moved. Ivy and Harlequin briefed their ally on the opponent as they cut through the trees. Her father had had some history with the Order of Saint Dumas, long ago, but no Azrael had been active east of Istanbul in over a century. Especially not _this_ kind. "The most important things to remember," Harley summarized, as they charged downhill, avoiding the congestion of panicked crowds scrambling the other way by bypassing the crowded paths entirely, "are that he thinks he's doing the work of God, as a literal avenging angel, and that if we can get the suit off him, he'll lose most of his power."

"Is it magical?" Talia asked, as she swung one-handed around a small tree that had loomed in her path, giving herself an extra burst of speed with the centripetal force. The chapel blew past to their right. Pam had found glossy dark ivy twining over the earth and around some of the trees, no doubt planted for decorative purposes, and added it to the ropes of grapes trailing behind her. Nothing like ivy in a fight, when she didn't have time to grow anything _special_.

She wrapped a strand of it around herself as she went, curling comfortably along her limbs and up her neck, forsaking its roots to live off of her strength for now, and fanning a mask of layered leaves over her face. The Owl was fairly sure he knew who Ivy was, but that didn't mean she needed to abandon subtlety completely.

"No, it's…the conditioning that was used to overwrite his identity is rooted in perception in a way that…" Harley seemed to realize that running down a hill with a fight only seconds away was not the right time for a psychology lecture. "He can't access most of his abilities if he isn't dressed as Azrael."

Talia nodded curt understanding, pulled a knife from her elegant boot, and then they burst from the woods and vaulted-scrambled-up-leapt the chain-link fence into the terrace where Azrael, once Champion of the Holy Order of Saint Dumas, resplendent in blue and silver armor, was advancing on a long-haired young couple covered in tattoos, who had run out of space to retreat, and were each trying to shield the other with their bodies.

Talia went low. Harlequin went high. Ivy stepped out of her shoes again and held position near the fence as she sent her vines to draw the sprawled bodies of earlier victims carefully out of the line of fire, while the long-haired couple fled without a second glance.

Good; she hated rescuing people too stupid to live. No one seemed to be dead yet, though most of them were dying. Bastard had been _drawing it out_ again. The only _good_ thing about the flaming sword, and this was a very mixed blessing, was that it tended to cauterize, so only a few of the casualties had serious bleeding she had to try to stem.

 _Stem._ Augh, Ed's puns had colonized her brain. Maybe she should get out of Gotham while she had the chance.

Out on the pavement, Azrael avoided Talia's low slash with his usual preternatural reflexes, but in consequence failed to notice Harley's much less threatening presence until her feet were about to make contact with his face, and the first blow of the encounter sent him stumbling back a step.

Harley flipped back away from that and landed, facing Azrael with his targets at her back, and Talia moved to take advantage of the opening. She landed her blow, this time, but the knife slashed open his surcoat and skittered off his armoured side, and one of his great fists lashed through the gap the lunge had left in her guard and sent her flying back, almost directly into a middle-aged woman with a slash to the chest, who seemed to be going into shock.

The gauntlet that had done the striking remained extended toward her, even as she caught herself, awkward and off-balance to avoid doing more damage to the victim, even as Azrael seemed to turn his attention back to Harley. Ivy knew what _that_ meant. Her shout of warning came just in time, as a quarter-size replica of Azrael's flaming broadsword flew from the maniac's left wrist, straight through the place where Talia's throat had been a moment before.

It still pinned her to the front wall of a candy store by her designer jacket, and possibly part of her shoulder, but Pam didn't have time to worry about that because evacuation was still ongoing. All the self-mobile targets had gotten away now, except a woman clinging to the hand of her half-conscious…brother, judging by the resemblance, whose intestines were only prevented from spilling out by a thin layer of scorched tissue, as he was borne toward safety. The fragile cases like him took excruciating care. Gently sliding the woman on whom Talia had almost landed across the cobblestones on a web of vines went all too slowly, but jarring her with rush might make the difference between life and death. The only good news was that Azrael had lost interest in mere victims now that he'd encountered resistance, and that (once again) depended slightly on your definition of _good._

Ivy hissed between her teeth as she split her attention between the hundreds of individual stems under her control and the scene in front of her real eyes. The mad knight had both hands on his sword again, and was scything it toward the woman who'd kicked him in the head and hadn't had the common sense to run away afterward.

"The demon Hellequin!" he bellowed. "We meet again!"

"Great, he can talk today," Pam muttered. Actually, she preferred it when the Azrael personality was coherent enough to be really annoying; she always felt worse about beating on the man when he came across more as a brainwashing victim than an asshole. Not that he wasn't always both.

Either way, though, he was dangerous. And he'd recognized Harley in spite of her civvies—maybe it was the mask, maybe it was the distinctive kick to the face. Maybe it was the animated plants in the background; everyone knew Ivy and Harlequin tended to come as a set. He wasn't coming close enough to Pam's side of the terrace for the trees to take a stab at him; he probably knew she was there.

"What kind of evil do you think you're vanquishing at an _amusement park?_ " the tiny clown demanded, cartwheeling out of reach. It was a good thing she hadn't worn the skirt.

The reply was garbled, but started somewhere around 'you' and meandered over to something involving Satan worship. Since the evil monks who'd created him hadn't intended for their Champion to ever select his own targets, Azrael's victimology when he rampaged tended to be all over the place. Harley had theories about the associations that pointed him in specific directions, but Pam didn't really care. She just wished he would _stop._

Good luck with that, as her father would have said.

Harlequin took a blunt pommel-blow to the gut soon after that, when she overextended herself going for his helmet in hopes of disengaging the System, and was out for several nerve-wracking seconds. Talia stepped up with her boot-knife and the shortsword that had nearly killed her, which she must have pried out of the wall, and engaged him in what seemed, from the glimpses Pam caught, to be a duel of blades worthy of an Errol Flynn film, although with less gaily clashing steel and more chance of someone being cleft in twain. (Cleaved? Cloven?) Every split-second dodge seemed to enrage him further. Harley recovered enough to go back to splitting his concentration. Talia wasn't favoring her left shoulder; good.

Instead, she was trying to engage her opponent in a doctrinal dispute vis-à-vis his name—presumably in hopes that poking holes in his delusions would throw him off, but Azrael was not really equipped for comparative theology. Wasn't made to cope with abstracts. He was nothing more than a malfunctioning pattern seared into a human brain by heartless men who wanted a weapon. If he'd been a little more sane, he would have been more of a threat. Owlman was worse, in a lot of ways, because he was smarter, even though he wasn't nearly as fast or as strong.

Still, even more than the first Talon, no one ever fought Azrael alone. Not unless there was no other choice. He'd nearly killed Crocodile a few years ago, when he'd volunteered as rearguard, and Waylon would have the scars forever.

Her ivy passed the last of the wounded into the hands of people she assumed to be EMTs, from the pressure feedback she was getting from the grass—eventually she'd engineer a plant capable of sight; until then she'd have to make do—and Pam shifted her attention to weaving woody barriers over every exit, thick enough to slow Azrael down. The gaps between buildings. The doors into them. Limited space wasn't ideal for evasion-based fighting, but the plaza was large enough, Harley was a good climber, and above all they _had_ to contain him. If he got downhill to the paramedics and survivors, and whoever else was out there, and hurt anyone else…well. Protection was always the priority. Everything else came second.

Talia seemed to grasp the necessity of containment, and had helped Harley herd and bait him repeatedly back toward the center of the open space, every time he turned his attention to one of the narrowing ways out. A short gash just below the ninja's collarbone was oozing blood; the broadsword must be running low on fuel. Harley wasn't visibly injured, yet, but her expression was growing grim.

 _Go, go, go,_ Pam urged her vines. Thirty seconds, and they'd have the area secured. She had to trust they could last another thirty seconds.

Talia al Ghul's two blades caught Azrael's broadsword in a solid crossed guard that still staggered her backward a step. Harlequin threw all her weight into the back of Azrael's knee and just barely saved Talia from getting her chest carved open like a turkey. The salvaged shortsword licked out into the narrow gap at the joint of Azrael's shoulder, and came away bloody. The brainwashed knight bellowed in outrage and nearly broke her skull. Talia ducked by a hair, and a steel-booted kick found her side.

Harlequin seized that moment to drive a kick of her own into the inside of the only leg he still had on the ground, and in spite of the armour that protected the joint from snapping, almost anyone else would have hit the pavement like a felled tree. Azrael grunted, swung his weight with the momentum, and got both feet under him again, stomping his heel a bare inch from Harley's ankle as she rolled hastily away. He always was far too fast for such a huge man.

Fighting someone like Azrael without decent weapons—or, in Harley's case, any weapons at all—was foolhardy. Relying on a partner you'd never fought alongside before was worse. Talia and Harlequin had held him for nearly three minutes, and it was possible they might have eventually worn him down enough to lay him out and strip his armor, somehow, before either of them went down for good. More likely, they wouldn't.

But now Ivy was free to join in, and Azrael hadn't even realized she had him completely surrounded.

Vines _moved._

Talia instinctively retreated when the earth under her feet lashed out, but Harlequin held her ground, ducking and rolling and _not falling back,_ splintering Azrael's concentration until he was so tangled to the waist in grapes and ivy that he could not advance at all, and then she retreated a little, out of his reach, as they crawled higher, around his chest and shoulders and arms.

"Ludovic," Harlequin said, still catching her breath, and Azrael stiffened.

" _Silence!_ " he snarled. Almost he seemed afraid.

Talia, standing ready a few yards back, narrowed her eyes. Pam, though, had seen this before. She waited, concentrating on holding him in place. A gorilla would have been easier. An _elephant_ would have been easier.

"Ludovic," the tiny masked woman cajoled, while the vines tangled around Azrael's arms, tightening by the second. "You know who you are. You _know_ nobody here deserved to die."

Ludovic Valley's breath hissed furiously through his teeth. It was obvious he didn't agree.

Harlequin pursed her lips, kept her big blue eyes locked on his slitted visor. "What was done to you was wrong. The brothers who betrayed the Order by doing it have already been punished. You don't _need_ to fight anymore. Let go. You're more than the System, Ludovic. You're stronger than Azrael. Think of Jean-Paul. He looks forward to visiting you, every day. He loves you. You don't have to vanquish anything to be worthy of that. Just be his father."

For a second it looked like she might have broken through to whatever small part of him hadn't been poisoned by all the years of secret programming and repressed memories of murder. His face and its expression were hidden, of course, but he fell still, and then his hand on the hilt of the flaming sword came open.

It seared through the base of the vines binding his right arm as it dropped, making Ivy cringe—ivy vines couldn't experience such a sensation as pain, but they knew _damage_ , and to Pam with her human nervous system that meant _hurting_ —so that with a roar he tore himself free of the weakened bonds on that arm, backhanded Harlequin into the nearest wall, snatched the weapon up again, and hacked his way free of the rest. Talia darted forward to intercept him, but the force with which his blade met hers knocked her flying across the square. Even as Azrael charged toward Harlequin, he fired his last gauntlet-blade at Ivy, finally recognized as a threat. She dove aside.

 _Safe._ But at what cost?

"Demon, I will cut out your blandishing _tongue!_ " the man who was not currently Ludovic Valley roared, out on the plaza, and brought his flaming sword down upon Harlequin's head. Pam lashed out with surviving vines, _too slow_ , saw Harley ducking desperately, _too late,_ her masked face set into a grin of focus with blood running from the corner of her mouth but no fear, because it was madly valiant _Harlequin,_ who wouldn't waste time being afraid when faced with a sword nearly as tall as herself—

_Kk-chnk._

It lodged in the plaster wall instead of Harley's skull, partly because the little heroine had ducked, but mostly because Azrael had been body-checked from behind.

"Harlequin is an entertainer," said Talia bint al Ghul, battered and emptyhanded, as she tightened her arm into a sleeper hold around the man's thick neck. " _I_ am the demon here."

Azrael heaved against the grip, going so far as to leave his sword in the wall to free both hands, but Harlequin rocketed up from the ground to half-stun him with an uppercut powered by every muscle in her body, and Pam, climbing the rest of the way to her feet, hurriedly tangled a tithe of vines to drag against every move he tried to make, as Talia (her feet barely touching the ground) tightened her choke, and after almost twice as long as it would have taken for a regular human, Azrael finally sagged into unconsciousness.

As a precaution, as soon as Talia stepped away, Ivy cocooned the toppling body entirely, until blue and silver had vanished entirely under green. They'd handed him into custody like this before; no one would be surprised.

Harlequin rustled through the leaves, prodded carefully at the intricate catches, and came away with the shining helmet. Gave it an angry look, as though it, being the face of Azrael, was personally responsible for the entire mess, wiped the surfaces she'd touched with her fingertips on her sleeve, and dropped it disgustedly on the ground. Then she dragged the back of her hand across her mouth, wiping away most of the trickle of blood and smearing cherry-pink lipstick up toward her ear.

"Okay?" Pam asked warily, coming forward as she folded the leaves back from her face. She was reasonably sure the blood was just from the inside of Harley's mouth getting cut on her teeth, probably that last time Azrael had swatted her, but there _had_ been a nasty abdominal blow earlier.

"Going to be a little sore tomorrow," Harley shrugged, rubbing the place just below the ribs where the sword-hilt had caught her. Which meant  _really_ sore, of course, because it was Harley. "But he didn't rupture anything. I did see it coming; he didn't get me full-force."

"Next time, don't get _hit_ ," directed Pam. Tried to punch her on the shoulder again, but Harley wove away, snickering, and punched _her_ instead. It didn't hurt.

"So, how did you like your Gotham City night of fun?" Harley asked Talia, eyes twinkling. "I'm sorry, this wasn't quite what I had in mind."

Talia grinned, the surprising open expression from the roller coaster multiplied by a factor of _shark_. She was still bleeding slightly in two places, but didn't seem to notice. "Invigorating. I will have to spend my free time here more often, if this is the usual result."

"Well, it's not like this _every_ time. We just have a knack for trouble. Huh, Ivy?" Harley nudged her again, and Pam rolled her eyes.

"We should probably get out of here before we wind up being asked for official statements," she said. People were drawing closer to the other side of her barriers now that the noise had died down, and she was pretty sure most of them were police.

" _Thanks,_ by the way, _"_ Harley said to Talia, who waved a hand in dismissal. Harley accepted that with a bright nod. If Talia was topiary, Harley was a water garden, sun on tiny dancing waterfalls and lilies scattered across still clean pools, rooted in the hidden mud. "I'll call the Deacon," she announced. "See if he can get the Order out here before we have to let the cops in. I swear, though," she told Pam, "if they let him break out _one_ more time, I'm letting the actual authorities have him."

"He'd massacre the other prisoners," Pam answered flatly. They'd been over this a dozen times. "As soon as he improvised a mask." Even without Azrael, Ludovic Valley was a huge, strong man with excellent reflexes, but he wasn't especially a violent one. Unfortunately, Azrael tended to talk in his head, and he never seemed able to remember for long how making a simple mask could possibly do any harm.

"And if they sent him to Arkham, Owlman would snap him up and make him into one of his attack dogs," Harley agreed. "I know."

Sad, as she always was when she had to remember how corrupted her old institution was, and then she shook it off and headed toward the most climbable-looking of Pam's barricades with a bounce in her step, muttering about how Deacon Blackfire _was_ going to get the Order to let her in on Ludovic's treatment from now on, or she'd break some Templar heads. See if she didn't.

Personally, Pam was pretty sure the sick-and-twisted splinter faction of the secret society of we-are-not-the-Knights-Templar had the more upright branch riddled with moles _at best_ ; Azrael breaking out on his own was one thing, but the way he seemed to keep acquiring a complete set of gear almost every time was _suspicious_.

The police outside were growing steadily more numerous, but weren't yet trying very hard to get in, having learned over the past few years that she usually only closed a perimeter when breaking it could cost lives, so she thought she'd take a breather until the Order arrived, before she tried to put everything back. At least it was night, so she wouldn't be asking them to pull out of the sunlight. Plants were eager to grow, and reluctant to retreat, but she felt better about asking them to help her with things like this if she got them sufficiently out of the way afterward that people wouldn't feel the need to hack bits off them.

One of the _many_ downsides to working in the city.

Not that plants minded being cut in quite the way animals did; if the sun and water and soil remained sufficient, and the central vascular systems weren't compromised, then a lost limb or so represented mostly a loss of the resources invested in growing it, and the advantages it might have provided. Plants couldn't _hurt_ in the same way animals could, and probably that was why she kept siding with humans in a thousand little ways and the big way of _not_ being part of the fight for what was left of the Earth's wild places. That and her fear.

Inaction was a coward's choice. She _knew_ that, and yet she still…

"You fight well," said Talia.

Pam blinked. She'd noticed the other woman coming closer, prodding the unconscious knight with one toe and the cut on her upper chest with one blunt-cut but perfectly manicured nail. Had been vaguely ready to be engaged in conversation if necessary. Had _not_ expected a compliment. "What?" Okay, she could manage something a little more intelligent than that: "You two and the vines did all the work."

Talia shrugged. "Effective resource management. One learns to appreciate it in a management position."

Pam rolled her lips in around her teeth and bit down; unlike Harley she hadn't reapplied her makeup after dinner, and could make all the thinky expressions she wanted without worrying about lipstick smudges that would make her keep looking ridiculous well after she finished pulling faces. She was fairly sure the compliment was sincere. She was also pretty sure she didn't deserve it. "You saved Harley," she said, looking up. "At the end." When her vines had failed. When _Pam_ had failed.

Talia flicked a long-fingered hand. "Perhaps. Your warning saved mine, earlier. There is no debt."

 _There are never any debts between friends,_ Harley would have said, but Pam had never completely believed that, and anyway, she and Talia al Ghul were definitely not friends. Pam had made very sure of that.

"And you weren't wrong about me," Talia said, more serious suddenly, as though she could read minds. "I _am_ an idiot. But I am not a complete fool. I love, less because I cannot stop than because I cannot _bring_ myself to stop…hoping. Wishing. But I have not _trusted_ him since I was seventeen."

Their solemn expression made her dark eyes seem twice as large, and the flicker of vulnerability was back again, and suddenly her reactions made some kind of sense. Why she'd gotten so defensive, so quickly, and why she was letting Pam get away with what she'd said, now that tempers had cooled. She was _ashamed_.

But not enough to make her look down. "You may entrust yourself and yours to my honor."

Pam closed her eyes. "I believe you," she said. Because she might despise the way so many women threw themselves away on the idea of changing a man when people could only ever change themselves and most of those men saw no reason to try, because Talia might let her father exclude her from meetings and search for an appropriate male heir to marry her off to, but that didn't make her nothing.

Even if even _she_ might sometimes think it did.

Then she opened them again, because that kind of honesty at the expense of pride, after Pam had been so many levels of bitch today because of things that weren't really about Talia at all, deserved honesty in response. "I'm not joining the League of Shadows," she said. She'd decided, now. Her head felt clear, like willow-trees.

"Yet," she added hastily. "I'm honored. I am. And I _want_ to be part of what you're doing. You can call me in for emergencies, call me a consultant, or something. But…I'm happy where I am."

Talia cast a long look around the ruined plaza, with its cracked plaster and bloodstains and the vines snaking across the open spaces. And flashed another smile. The rawness like turned earth was once again as gone as if it had never been. Pam always wondered how people _did_ that. "And no wonder."

"I'm actually not an adrenaline junkie," Pam said dryly. Unlike practically everyone she knew.

Talia laughed, like she thought it was a joke. Okay, maybe it had been. "But you would miss the fight."

Pam shrugged. She didn't _enjoy_ fighting, not the way some people did. Spent most encounters wishing they were over already, except when she really lost her temper. But…she'd gotten invested in being a hero. In the people who had her back, and making sure she had theirs. Walking away from them… "I'd miss a lot of things."

"Well." Talia ran her fingertips along the lower edge of her chest injury in what seemed to be an unconscious thoughtful gesture, picking up traces of blood. "My father is anxious for your help, but he is old enough to have learned patience. Freedom is not our everything, but it is important. The League asks for a great deal of commitment. We would not have you come to us while your heart lies elsewhere."

Pam thought, but did not say, that that one remark made them sound more like a cult than anything she had heard previously, and that she suspected Bruce Wayne's treachery had probably impacted recruitment procedure. It didn't matter. She'd made her choice. She was doing enough good here to justify living (Jokester would say life didn't need to justify itself, but he was, she meant this in the fondest terms, a sentimental fool) and saving the world could wait a little longer. _Talia al Ghul_ thought her contribution to controlling a combat situation was valuable; the others relied on her, even if there _hadn't_ been being Ella's Aunt Pam and bickering with Enigma like siblings, movie nights with Harley, and Waylon helping her with repotting, and all the rest of it. This was home, the way her parents' cold house had never been.

Harley might not need her, but she needed _this._  

"You'll be fine without me, then?" she asked lightly.

"As we say in the Leafshadow Foundation," Talia replied, a wry catch to her mouth, "Life will always find a way."

Pam huffed and smiled and swept her hair back from her face, but before she could say anything Harlequin's face popped up over the top of the one barricade where Pam couldn't detect a police presence, and she waved. "They were already on their way, Ivy!" she called, loud enough for everyone in the general vicinity to hear. "Better clean up!"

Pam waved back in acknowledgment, and closed her mask of leaves again before flexing herself out through her fingertips and the soles of her feet (though she was fairly sure that was just a visualization aid) to start unravelling the barricades.

Except for the vines cocooning Azrael and the single plant inhabiting Pam's body, grape and ivy began to slink back up the hill and wrap themselves around anything they could find. If the amusement park people turned out to mind that their grape arbor had colonized their tiny deciduous forest, or that the trees were rather more thoroughly draped in ivy and one wall of the little decorative chapel coated in it…well, she hoped they didn't mind. The thicker vines would break normal pruning shears, now.

(It was a long-term loan of strength, as she had learned to make fortifying her sector of Robinson Park, not a genetic change; she was excruciatingly careful with those even if it had been easy to make them to adult specimens, which it luckily wasn't, because even though she owed these vines for helping her, that didn't mean she wanted to destroy who-knew-how-many ecosystems by carelessly releasing a species of unstoppable ivy into the wild. Humans might be the greatest threat to vegetable life and the natural biosphere, but plants were one another's main _competitors,_ and in that kind of conflict it was more or less always correct to side against the invader. Not create a new one.)

Her focus returned to her body, letting the vines carry on finding new living space without her conscious control, and Harley was only just hoisting herself to the top of the lattice, even as it began to thin. She perched there for a second and then, drawing an involuntary smile from Ivy, kicked off and somersaulted twenty feet to the ground in defiance of her abdominal bruising. Still burning off the fight adrenaline. She was going to conk out on the bus before they were halfway home, Pam just knew it. Honestly. That woman.

"Ah," said Talia. With an intonation that implied _Aha._

Not gloating, but _knowing,_ and she looked from Harley, as she stuck the landing, to the suddenly apprehensive Pam, and gave an equally knowing smile.

Dammit.

 _Takes one to know one,_ Pam thought, surprised to find herself able to be wry. Sometimes bad karma caught up faster than it had any right to do. Pam watching Talia watch Wayne. Talia watching Pam watch Harlequin. _Turn about is fair play, after all._

Harley was good at seeing through people. The only reason she'd never noticed what an idiot Pam was about her was that she'd never looked. If Talia said _anything…._

Loving someone didn't give you a right to them. And it was _never_ as simple as having or not-having. Some people would say she should walk away _because_ of this, but Pam had never been willing to let childish feelings rob her of a good friend. Best friend. Of all the friends she had here, of being _happy,_ for the first time in a long, long time. It hurt, some, still, but she wasn't _pining,_ or being anything but realistic. By the time they'd met, Harley was already ridiculously married. It would never come to anything, and so it didn't matter. No need for sympathy or awkwardness. No need for anyone but Pam to do anything. No one needed to know.

"The heart loves as it will," repeated Talia, kindly this time. And laid a finger across her lips.

Pam let her breath out. She most _definitely_ owed Talia al Ghul now. Because she might not be ashamed of how she felt, not the way Talia was, but it was her secret, and a lesser person would have felt utterly justified taking this opportunity for revenge.

Harlequin had picked her way over to the wall where Azrael had pinned Talia earlier, and retrieved something that was presumably the ruined jacket, and now she straightened, brightly, with something that glinted in her hand.

"Harley found your knife," Pam observed, her voice only a little hoarse. "That's important. Fingerprints."

"I need to worry about my fingerprints linking me to the defeat of a murderer?"

Pam shrugged. "This is Owlman's city. You never know when he's going to decide to have evidence twisted against someone." There wasn't really a gentle way to say that, or if there was Pam wasn't good enough with words to think of it, but she tried to soften it with a sympathetic smile, and didn't actually spell out that someone with a complicated romantic-and-adversarial relationship with Bruce Wayne probably didn't want to give Owlman an easy shot at her.

That was really the best way she knew how to be kind. Not saying the things she knew would hurt.

A fist knocked staccato five times at the barricade Harley'd climbed over, dragging Pam's attention there, and she reached out and tugged at the others, the ones screening them off from the police, telling the vines to take their time, and pushed at the one where she'd felt the knocking, so that it raveled away into little more than wickerwork and she could see the outlines of monks in brown robes. "And the Crusades are on the doorstep," she informed her companion.

Talia snorted, and muttered something in Arabic, which Pam didn't understand but probably agreed with. (Organized religion was a transparent tool of the patriarchy.) "Yes," she replied, "but they'll take it from here. I, for one, have had enough _fun_ for one night. Home, shower, _bed_."

Her night out had most definitively gotten hijacked and derailed, first by Talia and then by god-damned Azrael, but she didn't mind so much now that it wasn't going to be the last one. Harley was jogging back from the fence now, Talia's dagger in one hand and Pam's abandoned shoes in the other, and her own bag slung over her shoulder, and Pam's eyes caught on Talia's open wounds. "Uh, and we should probably get those cuts taken care of before we catch the bus." And maybe a change of shirt; the woman was eye-catching enough without the bloodstains.

"It's fine," Talia brushed her off.

Pam folded her arms. "Last I heard, being a total badass was no defense against infections."

Talia pulled a face that Pam thought was probably an emotionally-repressed attempt to react to being scolded and complimented at the same time, and…maybe they could be friends after all.

...Harley was going to be _smug._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Azrael is Ludovic here because Jean-Paul was in college when Tim was in high school, and Tim is currently eight. ^^; The Order of Saint Dumas had no good faction in canon, only evil and eviler, and normal Azrael wears red and gold. The horrible hammy dialogue is my addition to the character.


End file.
